Since I wrote “I’m perfectly happy using PHP” last week I figured I’d show the other side’s viewpoint as well. There are those out there that loathe the language. Evee goes off on PHP like no one else could:

PHP is an embarrassment, a blight upon my craft. It’s so broken, but so lauded by every empowered amateur who’s yet to learn anything else, as to be maddening. It has paltry few redeeming qualities and I would prefer to forget it exists at all.

Her analogy to a toolbox full of tools that you can’t really use properly is apt. I do feel like I write a lot of workarounds for things. I’ve always thought it was due to the depth of my knowledge of the language. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it is indicative of it.

Some of the things pointed out are rather baffling, such as why the functions names are inconsistently styled such as using underscores or not, etc. But those are a matter of taste really. A language can throw out a style-guide and still be very useful if those functions do things that are of value. As pointed out there, it just gets worse from there.

If you’re into programming you might as well read the entire post. It is good.